A Chomping Bite of Nervousness

Hello World! (Actually, this has to be significantly less than the world since I haven't put this out there much)

Once upon a time I decided, "Hey, I should teach piano lessons." My supportive husband, mom, sister, etc. all chime in with, "you would be so great! So far, so good right? The thought is there, I live in a populated place (populated with what demographics I am not sure about yet), my family is supportive, I have been playing the piano since I was 6ish, I must have this right?

Well, over the last few days I have been putting real thought into it. I still want to do it, but man there is so much more to think about than I first thought. There is scheduling, how parents sign up, what times I should be available for lessons, do I write a monthly newsletter or a blog, what piano books would I prefer my students to use, how much should lessons cost, what policies do I set in place, is there a point where this is illegal without some form of business license, etc. Whew!

So, naturally, I go to the all-knowledgeable Google--where I find that teachers in other states find lessons in Utah to be ridiculously cheap, and think teachers should be highly trained and qualified (like college-level trained), that it would be a good idea to have a mentor piano teacher. There is endless debate on Alfred vs. Bastien vs. Faber piano books. There are ways to set up web payment/scheduling. Many of them were talking about interviewing potential students/parents.

My conclusions so far: Lessons in Utah may be super cheap, but as a new teacher and one that hasn't taken music to the college level, that is totally okay with me. I must confess that the thing about college training got to me a bit (maybe because it was said with such little respect for those that choose to teach without doing this), but I remembered that I knew someone who was teaching piano in High School, and that I have a degree in elementary education which is super applicable to teaching piano. As for a mentor piano teacher, I am sure my old piano teachers would be willing to speak to me. On the subject of books, well, I have fond memories of the Alfred Series, and if I do a good job, it shouldn't matter what books they use, especially as beginners. Finally, scheduling. My schedule is my own. I do not have to teach at a time that just doesn't work for me. (Though I do need students so I am trying to be realistic and reasonable.) The things that freaks me out the most, is the whole process of trying to get students. Most of my Cedar City friends/acquaintances don't have children to teach. So I am waiting to get accepted to the Facebook Cedar City selling Group. I am also waiting for my husband to get back from his trip to help me set up a Facebook Page. Eventually we will be able to attend church around here and will be able to start networking and stuff that way. (What do nonmembers do without a church setting to meet people?)

Thanks for chomping on Trisa's Nervous Thoughts! Tune in next time for nervous thoughts about.... Just kidding. This pretty much covered the nerves.

"Kill 'em! Kill 'em!"

What am I averaging, one blog a year? Man, it should be easy to meet an improvement goal on this one!

You may be wondering, "why on earth did she title her blog "kill 'em! kill 'em!"? The simple answer? That crazy song that talks about killing people with kindness just started running through my head and the "kill 'em kill 'em" part is just hilarious to me. Also, I wasn't sure if I was going to talk about my whirlwind moving experience the last few weeks, or why I chose to title my blog as a whole "The Lemonade Stand." Heck, I even thought about writing about how applicable my ponderize scripture really is to my life right now. So naturally, with all of these awesome options, I chose "Kill 'em! Kill 'em!" 

I guess in reality, the moving story and the reason I named this blog The Lemonade Stand go quite well together. For the last 2 1/2 or so years I have been living in a town far away from all the things and people that I know. Though it is a gorgeous place and I had man happy moments there, my overall happiness level went down. That was a super hard change for an introverted people watcher. Strangely enough, one of the skills I have most appreciated in myself is the ability to find humor in normal situations. Whether it is laughing at myself and what I did or said at work or other places, or laughing at others (rude, I know) because of my perception as an outsider looking in. Because of this skill, even the days where life gave me many lemons, I was able to make lemonade out of enough situations in my day that no day was totally lousy. I was then able to tell friends what I did or saw that day and spread the joy. I even recall someone telling me something like, "Trisa, I don't know if these things just happen only around or to you, or if you just look at the world differently." I guess I can't be certain of that either, but I think it is the latter. However, my time in little town, USA, seemed to diminish that skill. There was nothing funny about the lonely inside of my house (though occasionally Chewy and some squirrels would help with that), or the empty places I went walking. I didn't mess up words with people I talked to, because I rarely had people to talk to. I didn't see anyone riding a unicycle around a campus, or wearing anything that looked like a shower curtain. Eventually my husbands job came into question too (he worked at a gas plant), they were talking about closing it or selling it. So we put our house for sale. Nothing. Nibbles, but no bites. Eventually we decided we needed to decide if we should go without our house sold. So we went to the temple and prayed. Though I should not be surprised, much of the answer that I got was related to Heavenly Father wanting us to have joy. Despite all my efforts to be happy where I was, that was not the best place for me to seek out joy! So that weekend we came to Cedar City and looked at places to live, applied for them, and a week or so later got one. Within the next week we had packed up and gone. Gone back to clean up. And are now here and almost done unpacking. "Men are that they might have joy." I know Heavenly Father has been helping us with the process. Though it seems like many things have gone wrong, whenever a door has closed another better one has opened. He really does want us to have joy, and I am hoping that my skill of finding the humor in the ordinary will begin to return!

The moral of this blog post is: Kill 'em with kindness, and go where you can share the most "life-lemonades." (For example, I almost wrote most with a lisp, why? I don't know.) 

Have a motht excellent day!